Unemployed young northerners

In last night’s leaders’ debate all three parties emphasised the importance of increasing the number of apprenticeships and vocational training to help build our industrial base and get young people back into work. This is to be welcomed.

ippr north is currently researching some of the most deprived communities in northern England. For many of the young people we have spoken to, one of the major barriers they face in getting into work is having to have previous experience. They agree that having more apprenticeships and in-work training opportunities would most help them get into work. It’s also their experience that education and qualifications do not help, but ‘who you know’ does – which is also difficult for them to achieve.

These young people are critical of training courses that do not lead to work. Too often the major objective is simply for young people to be ‘seen’ to be meaningfully occupied; if the process has no job prospect at the end, there is a danger of vulnerable young people becoming even more disillusioned about the benefits of education and the opportunities available to them. This risks lowering aspiration, and reinforcing a belief that education does not lead to employment.

But perhaps most fundamentally for the North, the majority of the election debate has been focused on the issues of ‘labour supply’ – particularly training and skills – perhaps because this is the area where the leaders feel they have most levers.

For a sustainable recovery to happen in the North, the parties must do more to tackle the thorny issue of creating new, high-quality, low-skilled jobs. Only when jobs offer the opportunity for progression and decent pay, can they truly offer a way for people to improve their lives. The risk otherwise is that we further entrench inequality.

Evelyn Tehrani

As safe as houses?

The Nationwide Building Society has just reported that house prices in the UK rose by 10.5% over the last year – the first double-digit increase since June 2007.

Although at a personal level this will be a great relief for those households that found themselves in negative equity as a result of the fall in prices between October 2007 and February 2009, it is not a cause for national celebration. House prices in the UK are still at high levels, relative to incomes, and it is again becoming harder for young people to take their first step on the property ladder.

The manifestos of the three main parties have little to say on the housing market – though Labour and the Liberal Democrats want an increase in the number of affordable homes and Labour repeat the Budget pledge to exempt house purchases below £250,000 from stamp duty for the next two years – and nothing to say on the need to prevent a resumption of rapid house price inflation.

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has done an excellent job since 1997 in keeping consumer price inflation close to its target rate, but ensuring greater stability in the UK economy in future requires control of consumer and house price inflation. It is a fact that house prices boomed in the period leading up to each of the last four recessions in the UK (in the early and late 1970s, the late 1980s and most of the 2000s). If nothing is done now, there will eventually be another house price boom, to be followed inevitably by recession.

Building more affordable homes will help at the margin but would only prevent future house price inflation if it was done on a major scale, something that no one is proposing. Interest rates cannot help, because they are set to control consumer price inflation. What is needed is an overhaul of the regulation of the UK mortgage market, to include limits on loan-to-value and loan-to-income ratios, restrictions on buy-to-let and self-certified mortgages and changes to remuneration practices at mortgage lenders to ensure bonus payments reflect performance over several years.

None of the main political parties was brave enough to challenge our love affair with our homes by making such proposals ahead of the election. It is to be hoped that the next government will be brave enough to implement measures along these lines after it.

Tony Dolphin

The Sunday Times Rich List could pay off the deficit without noticing

The Sunday Times this week published the latest list of the collective wealth of the 1,000 multimillionaires in Britain which has climbed to £335.5 billion, up £77.265 billion on 2009. Despite the global economic downturn this represents 29.9% growth on last year – the biggest rise in the 22-year history of the Rich List.

Quite apart from the fact that this is yet another indication that those ‘architects’ of the economic crisis have also been its beneficiaries, this level of growth is completely unsustainable by almost any standards. It does, though, suggest a rather tempting solution to the political parties’ collective headache over the public deficit.

By our calculations, just 20% of the combined wealth of the Rich List would be sufficient to fund the entire public deficit for 2010-2011. In political party terms, just half of last year’s growth could plug the hole in Liberal Democrat plans; a 25% share of the richest hundred’s combined wealth of £182bn would fund Labour’s shortfall; and if this year’s 53 billionaires (rising from 43 last year) could stump up £53bn between them, that would plug the Conservatives' plans.

Of course, if it was done through taxation there would be cries of foul and flight – although interestingly the Sunday Times this year plays down such cries as threats rather than realities – but it would be worth the anoraks running some sums.

But in these unprecedented times, what if the Rich List 2010 somehow clubbed together and in an act of monumental generosity simply gave a small part of their wealth away? For the many millions facing as yet unknown austerity in our schools, hospitals and communities, it might make a difference that would go down in the annals of history far more than any investment in a trophy football team or quantity of private jets. And for the richest thousand? They probably wouldn’t even notice.

Ed Cox

Higher spending in the devolved nations

Whatever the outcome of this election, everyone knows that public spending is going to be cut dramatically in future years. But how might cuts affect the distribution of funding across the UK as a whole?

A new ippr paper by David Bell, Professor of economics at Stirling University, argues that thanks to the perverse properties of the funding formula used to dish out money to the devolved nations, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be better protected than England. He warns that the current funding disparities that exist between England and the devolved nations will actually widen as overall spending across the UK falls.

Why? First, because the main parties have promised to protect health spending, while Labour is also promising to protect a substantial proportion of the education budget, and it these two items of spending which make up well over half the grant that goes from Westminster, via the controversial Barnett formula, to the devolved administrations. Protecting health and education therefore safeguards a bigger share of the budget than in England. The effect won’t be huge but it will be felt. Certainly we won’t see the current spending gap across the nations fall.

Of course the realities of budget-deficit reduction after the election might mean that health and education don’t survive unscathed. But even if these areas face some pruning the oddities of the Barnett formula will still ensure that devolved budgets don’t fall as much as those in England.

The so-called Barnett squeeze, a reference to the fact that overtime the formula is supposed to bring about equal spending per head, actually goes into reverse when spending in England is cut. For example a 5% reduction in English spending will actually increase the gap between English per head spending and that received by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Does this matter?

Arguably it will exacerbate English resentment over the higher spending enjoyed by the devolved nations. Earlier this year we published research that shows that the number of those in England who believe that Scotland gets ‘more than its fair share’ of money has nearly doubled in the last 7 years. Awareness of spending disparities is on the rise. So if the English were increasingly annoyed about how much money went to Scotland in an era when spending was growing how will they react when they learn that the funding gap is likely to widen as cuts are unleashed?

Guy Lodge

Is the public sector really ‘too big’?

How public spending is spread around the UK is generating great interest, after David Cameron identified areas like Northern Ireland and the North East as having a public sector that is ‘too big’. Is he right? Well, sort of.

Much of the coverage has been based on figures that show the public sector constitutes up to 70 per cent of the economy in some parts of the country. These are quite shocking figures, but they deserve closer inspection.

Treasury figures published last week reveal that spending per head is spread unevenly around the country. Areas like Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the North East and the North West of England receive above average levels of public spending per head, while regions like the South East and East of England receive less than the UK average. Surprisingly for some, these figures also reveal that is it actually London that receives the most public spending per head – 15% above the UK average.

Mostly what this shows us is which parts of the UK have the highest levels of social and economic need, as a large proportion of this spend is made up of ‘social protection’– i.e. benefits and the state pension. This spending is entitlements-based, and responsive to need, so if the number of claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance in an area increases, so too does social protection spending.

So why didn’t David Cameron flag London’s public sector as too large? The figures he used looked at the sector as a proportion of GDP, rather than public spending per head. The City of London’s economic success (much of it the result of people commuting in from surrounding regions) disguises the size of public sector spending when the figures are viewed in this way.

Cameron did also make the argument that the private sector needs to be larger in the Northern regions, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is the right way to think about the issue. It is not so much that the public sector is 'too big' but that the private sector is 'too small'. You could argue that without public sector employment the situation could be even worse in some parts of the UK.

We all know cuts are coming and they have to be made, but it is vital that economic geography is factored into the thinking as the size of the public sector is reduced. Otherwise, there is a risk that swinging cuts could have a particularly negative effect where social and economic need is already high.

Katie Schmuecker

The parties and voluntary sector engagement

Last week Gordon Brown suggested that life after politics will not see him slide into a high-profile job at the World Bank or the IMF, but a turn to 'charity or voluntary work'. My fear is that the current policy outlook jeopardises the existence of this charitable future, or at best transforms it beyond recognition.

On the face of it, the political consensus forming around the need to ‘strengthen the voluntary sector’ bodes well for charities and community groups. All of the main parties have put forward measures which affirm their commitment to the sector, from Labour’s Social Impact Bonds, through the Lib Dems’ increase on gift-aid payouts to the Conservatives’ Big Society Bank. The charity sector already receives one third of its income from the state, and this looks set to rise under any future government.

So why the concern? The cynic within me sees this newfound enthusiasm for voluntary sector engagement as a neat way of divorcing a future government from the looming problem of public service spending cuts, while reaping the anticipated rewards of a ‘change’ agenda which 'returns power' to the hands of communities.

The idea is that money can be saved through outsourcing to charities and communities, under the guise of ‘inclusive’ government. This is already underway: public service contracts currently make up around 65% of the voluntary sector’s statutory income.

Yet by asking charities to compete for public sector contracts which they lack the infrastructure to deliver, policy falls short of the substantive support that the voluntary sector will need if it is to play the starring role that the three major parties have assigned to it. In the context of a battle for the future of affordable public services, the current measures seem analogous to handing David a slingshot and sending him forth to meet Goliath.

As highlighted by recent ippr work on 'Capable Communities', charities add value where other service delivery mechanisms cannot, owing to their niche, local expertise and their independence from top-down targets and constraints. To couple simple, finance-based policy to an expectation that charities will transform into slick, area-wide providers of target-hitting public services is to inhabit the grey area between naїvety and negligence.

The new government will need to sit up and do some serious thinking about the scale, process and viability of this proposed transformation or risk selling an expectant and dependent public woefully short.

Leo Ringer

So what IS behind BNP support?

The BNP launched their manifesto today, and it’s worth taking a look at what they offer the British voter. Alongside getting out of Afghanistan - “there is not a single grain of Afghan sand that is worth the blood of a British soldier” apparently (though the idea that we are there for the sand may be news to some) - and “ending the global warming conspiracy”, they also vow a “halt to the immigration invasion”.

As Nick Griffin has tried to detoxify his brand, talking less about race, he has ratcheted up discussions of immigration. He now argues that much of the BNP’s support reflects the fact that they are the only party to take into account communities’ ‘real’ (and according to them, very negative) experiences of immigration.

ippr published a paper this week which examined whether he is right. We used regression analysis to examine the roots of BNP support across 150 local authorities, looking at whether high levels of immigration do raise communities’ support for the BNP, or whether other variables – such as political disengagement – are more important.

The findings suggest that areas which have higher levels of recent immigration are not more likely to vote for the BNP. In fact the more immigration an area has experienced, the lower its support for the far right. This reflects the findings of previous research which suggests that, on the whole, the more interaction people have with migrant groups the less concerned about migration they are.

We aren’t claiming that the scale of immigration in recent years isn’t of concern to many people; or that immigration doesn’t have some negative effects; or that there is no link between voting far right and being anti-immigration. What we show is that where people have significant lived experiences of immigration, those experiences are not of the kind which drive them to vote for the British National Party.

So what is behind BNP support? The evidence points to political and socio-economic exclusion as key drivers (see our recent ippr report). In particular, areas with low average levels of qualifications (which can mean people struggle in today’s flexible, knowledge-based economy); low levels of social cohesion; and low levels of voter turn out (indicating political disenchantment) are the ones which show more BNP support. It is these issues mainstream politicians should focus on to improve the lives of marginalised people, and draw support away from the party, making its future manifestos even more irrelevant than today’s.

Laura Chappell

What election?

Stranded in a hotel room half way around the world in east Beijing, you would probably forgive me for being a little out of the loop when it comes to the latest General Election developments. Sure, I can log on to the Guardian and track Andrew Sparrow’s live blog or get the latest election headlines on CNN in between rolling footage of ash cloud and stranded tourists, but in the English language press here in China there’s very little coverage of the closest electoral contest in 20 years in Britain.

That said, one article in yesterday’s Global Times, China’s leading daily for international affairs did catch my eye. Indeed, it is the one and only piece I have seen on the UK election since arriving in Beijing last Tuesday. The paper ran the story about Nick Clegg calling for the end to the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the US:

‘The leader of one of Britain’s most important political parties said on Tuesday that the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States was a relic of a bygone age and needed reassessing.’

The article then goes on to say that this latest interjection by Clegg comes at the end of a ‘remarkable week’ in which he has become, referring to round one of the televised TV debates, ‘an overnight sensation’ with support for the Liberal Democrats moving up ‘in some polls to parity with the ruling Labor (sic) party’.

According to the reporter, ‘Clegg’s party could win the election, and in the event of a hung parliament... he could play a key role in forming a governing coalition.’

Couched alongside successive articles (here, here and here) dismissing the call from some US senators for China to revalue the Yuan, and another in the state-run China Daily reporting a recent US poll that suggests that 80 per cent of Americans have no faith in the federal Government, this latest article about a relatively minor incident in the British election debate appears to conform to a particular trend.

While I don’t doubt that there is genuine interest in European politics in China, this article has as its raison d’être one thing and one thing only. This coverage of Nick Clegg, the ‘star so far of the campaign’ according to the newspaper, has nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats’ prediction of the financial crisis or the party’s policies for public service reform in Northern England.

Instead, it has everything to do with the message that this particular story conveys to the Chinese people: China is not alone in its critique of the US, China is right to stand up to the US and China should continue to do just that.

This minor piece of coverage of the British electoral debate in China serves merely to reinforce Chinese perceptions of the US during the latest cooling of relations between the two global superpowers. One thing is for sure, while a future Prime Minister Clegg might expect a somewhat guarded welcome on his first state visit to DC, he would likely be greeted much more warmly in Beijing.

David Nash

What is the real appetite for change?

‘Change’ is everywhere in this election. Nick Clegg is offering change by the bucketload, David Cameron is doing his best to out-change Clegg, and Gordon Brown’s silence on the matter is noticeable – because he knows the change many voters would like to see would involve him not being Prime Minister.

But do people really want change or do they just like hearing about it? I often feel that our resistance to real, concrete change that actually affects us is apparent in our reaction to plans to reduce the number of post offices or restructure healthcare services.

The latter is particularly pertinent for me right now because where I live in Islington there is long-running and very popular campaign to save the A&E at the Whittington hospital, whose closure is part of NHS London’s restructuring plans. Local politicians of all parties are queuing up to rubbish the plans and support the local campaign, and similar campaigns are being run across London.

Restructuring health services in the capital so that more care is provided in local or specialist centres, and less in hospitals, is apparently more cost-effective and likely to deliver better care to local people. But local people don’t like it because they’ve got used to having their local hospital. Tuesday night’s BBC London evening news featured a local leader whose main argument against closing the nearby A&E seemed to be simply that people had got used to it. If we took this approach to every public policy question, nothing would ever change.

On the one hand, you could simply argue that local NHS managers have done a bad job in communicating the benefits of the changes to local people, or that on this occasion the changes in question are just wrong. But I also think it shows that people’s first reaction to real, visible, concrete change that affects them directly is negative: we like things just the way they are, thank you very much.

I think this creates a real challenge for all those politicians promising change in this election. We will need many more radical changes to our economy and society if we want to drive forward a fair and sustainable recovery. Politicians need to show us how they will deliver real change which doesn’t flounder on our inbuilt preference for inertia. Otherwise ‘change’ will continue to be just another campaign slogan that means very little once our votes have been cast.

Kayte Lawton

Back to work?

With the latest figures showing a rise in unemployment – but a fall in the number claiming unemployment benefit – it seems like there is an opportunity to momentarily shift discussion away from the Clegg bounce and leadership debates and towards welfare policy. So far the parties have largely focused on making sure voters know that they will be tough on welfare, but with unemployment at 2.5 million, this is insufficient.

Lots of similarities between Labour and Conservative welfare policies are evident from the manifestos, but also some important differences, in approach as well as policy.

There are similarities in the sound-bites: Labour aims for a ‘swift return to employment’ and the Conservatives want to ‘get Britain working again’. And in the headlines: both main parties are keen to offer more targeted and personalised support, focus attention on job creation and prevent a scarred generation of young people. There are similarities in flagship programmes, namely Labour’s Flexible New Deal and the Conservatives’ single Work Programme. And both parties talk of toughening up the system with proposals on sanctions and benefit cheats.

But there are also significant differences. Labour’s manifesto commitments include an extension to the Young Person’s Guarantee, a better off in work guarantee, a living wage in Whitehall, and rises in the National Minimum Wage. And the narrative of a ‘big society’ that underpins Tory proposals to tackle welfare dependency highlights different roles for the state, welfare to work organisations and individuals.

What of the Liberal Democrats? Well, their manifesto commitments on welfare are noticeably thin. There is a focus on supply-side measures such as job creation and especially green jobs, but proposals to tackle unemployment are mostly absent.

It is clear that many challenges remain around welfare reform. Amongst the most significant is personalising welfare. Emerging findings from ippr’s innovative Now it’s Personal research are highlighting the need for interventions that don’t just isolate employment support and that recognise a wider set of needs such as childcare and transport. Also needed are advisers who have good knowledge of the local environment and in particular good relationships with local employers and training providers. In addition a focus on supporting sustainable job outcomes with more support for people once they are in work to manage the transition as well as a volatile and flexible labour market.

A tougher welfare policy may seem like the right tactic to appeal to voters, but with 2.5 million people currently unemployed and with public sector cuts still to come, this will not be enough. More radical change is needed for the welfare system to be genuinely responsive, personalised and effective.

Dalia Ben-Galim

When the economic conditions are right

The Liberal Democrats’ surge in the opinion polls has led to increased interest in their policies. One area of focus in this week’s leaders’ debate on international affairs is likely to be Europe, including the issue of UK membership of the euro.

The Liberal Democrats are rather more enthusiastic abut this prospect than the other two main parties. The Conservatives are opposed in principle and Labour has put forward a set of conditions that effectively allow them to shelve the issue indefinitely. But the Liberal Democrat manifesto says: ‘We believe that it is in Britain’s long-term interest to be part of the euro. But Britain should only join when the economic conditions are right, and in the present economic situation, they are not. Britain should join the euro only if that decision were supported by the people of Britain in a referendum.’

Putting aside the remote likelihood of a ‘yes’ vote in a referendum and concentrating on the economic issues, when might the conditions be right?

One argument put forward by the antis is that the depreciation of sterling since the beginning of the financial collapse has helped limit the impact on the UK economy (in contrast to, say, Greece). There is an element of truth in this argument but, although sterling fell by 24 per cent against the euro in 2008, the effect on the economy, in terms of stronger exports and weaker imports, appears to have been modest. Furthermore, although sterling is now 10 per cent higher against the euro compared to the end of 2008, it could be argued that the best time to join the euro is immediately after a sharp fall in sterling, so that any gains in competitiveness are ‘locked in’.

But joining the European Monetary Union does not just mean adopting the euro: we’d also share a common monetary policy, and in particular a common short-term interest rate, with other members. That would not be a problem at the current time. Interest rates are rock bottom in the UK and Europe. Indeed, there could be benefits from the UK joining the euro now, in the form of lower long-term interest rates.

But it might be a problem in the long term. When economic conditions return to something approaching normality, the UK authorities will be desperate to avoid, among other things, a renewed spurt in house prices and surge in mortgage lending. Setting interest rates at an appropriate level will be one means of achieving this aim. But that option would not be available if interest rates in the UK were being set by the European Central Bank based on economic conditions across the whole of the euro-area.

Ironically, joining the euro in the present economic situation would probably have little effect on the UK economy; the risk of such a move would only become apparent in the long term.

Tony Dolphin

Green economic vision?

Yesterday Nick Clegg launched the Liberal Democrat vision for a green economy. A year of intensive investment to the tune of £3.1bn would create 100,000 new green jobs, 30,000 to be taken up within the first year. Labour and the Conservatives are comparatively ambiguous: Labour has promised to create 400,000 new green jobs by 2015, while the Tories have made only a vague commitment to ‘generate thousands of green jobs’.

On wind power Clegg proposes renovating seven ports in the North of England and Scotland for turbine production – essential if the UK is to secure ‘in house’ manufacturing jobs from its potentially massive wind industry and if we are to attract overseas manufacturers (as ippr argued last year). Labour commits only to making a decision on the feasibility of such a project ‘early in the next Parliament’.

Another key proposal is £140m of investment into a bus scrappage programme, to replace old buses while creating new jobs. This distances the Lib Dems from Labour and the Conservatives who are more interested in protecting the UK’s car manufacturing industry, which Labour intends to make green by promoting ‘rapid take up of electric and low carbon cars’.

The Lib Dems’ eco-cashback scheme would provide a financial incentive to make energy efficiency improvements to your home in the form of a £400 reward. This goes further than the Government’s current boiler scrappage scheme as it includes areas such as double glazing and microgeneration too.

What about green jobs for the young? The Lib Dems plan for 18–25s to receive training, education or an internship after only 90 days on Jobseeker’s Allowance. This is dramatically less than the 1 year that young people currently have to wait under the Future Jobs Fund. But Labour has announced that 10,000 (out of 170,000) of the jobs/placements/training schemes to be created through the FJF will be of the green variety; the Lib Dems have so far made no such pledge.

Overall, the Liberal Democrats’ plans on green jobs are ambitious and challenging, but the electorate may not find them credible.

Kandida Purnell

Every ash cloud has a silver lining

Most of those stranded on foreign shores – including my colleague David Nash, whose keynote presentation at a symposium in Beijing seemed like a good idea at the time – will fail to appreciate the ash cloud’s silver lining.

It’s equally hard to see how British businesses will benefit or how those whose products rely on fast delivery to market, such as the flower growers in Kenya, will appreciate the bright side of the continuing ban on flights to and from the UK.

According to Independent newspaper – using Reuters copy – though, there are ten silver linings to the cloud of volcanic ash currently hovering over northern Europe. These include lower risk of stroke, which apparently is heightened by aircraft noise, and saving 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions; equivalent to the annual emissions of 50 of the world’s poorest countries.

Slightly different estimates of the carbon emissions saved are available here, but you get the picture.

So why is a climate change researcher such as me not rejoicing? Because aside from clearing the skies of west London (and allowing the people of Hounslow to return to their back gardens for what, by coincidence, was a scorcher of a weekend), the ash cloud’s temporary excoriation of all aircraft and their vapour trails from our skies brings mostly economic pain and major inconvenience. And from an environmental perspective, there has been no structural change. Once the ash cloud has gone, it will be business as usual; the emissions saved utterly trivial.

What, on the other hand, the continued eruption of the world’s most unpronounceable volcano shows with great clarity is that whether we like it or not, our economy and the way we live our lives is heavily reliant on aviation. Ground planes – for whatever reason – and at least some of the machinery of globalisation grinds to a halt.

Is there an electoral silver lining? Certainly the conjuring of Dunkirk spirit is never a bad thing (it worked for Thatcher in 1983), although there is a danger that politicians merely look impotent at the hand of nature and, as such, it’s equally hard to see how the non-incumbents can make political capital out of the ashes.

If anything, the volcanic ash has exposed – once again – how vulnerable the current model of globalisation is and how trying to deal with emissions from aviation, whose growth will be a major problem for future governments, simply by curbing flying is a political non-starter.

When the ash cloud lifts and planes take to the air again, we need politicians to think about how we can accelerate technological innovation to reduce emissions from aircraft permanently, how the noise, misery and health impacts that jet aircraft bring to those grounded under their flight paths is reduced, how to replace flying where possible with hi-tech alternatives and how gradually we can shift to a more sustainable model of global trade.

Andrew Pendleton

The first step to tackling ‘the neet problem’… ditch the term ‘neet’

A new word has entered common usage as a result of this recession. With young people being the worst affected by the downturn (nearly double the percentage of 16-24 year olds are unemployed compared to the rest of the adult population), we’re hearing a lot about those who are not in employment, education or training. Or ‘neets’ as they’ve become known.

This is undoubtedly one of the most important problems thrown up by the recession. There is a mounting body of evidence that being unemployed early in life can ‘scar’ people later on. If you are out of work when young you are more likely to have spells of unemployment later in life. You’re likely to earn less in the future, too. And we know that being in work is massively important for general well-being, sense of identity and social mobility. So the Conservative candidate for Hammersmith, Shaun Bailey, was right to be hitting the streets this weekend to highlight the problem of youth unemployment. Despite a slew of programmes introduced by the Labour government – from guaranteeing jobs to increasing education places – it looks likely that they’ll miss their target of 7.6% of 16-18 year olds being ‘neet’ this year.

The trouble with ‘the neet problem’ is that it isn’t one problem. It’s lots of very different problems that have been unhelpfully bundled together in a single term. How can politicians come up with policies to help ‘neets’ when it includes everything from top graduates unable to find jobs and those leaving school with no qualifications? And what about those who are ‘neet’ in cities dependent on manufacturing compared to those in rural communities? And don’t forget the difference between men and women – women are four times more likely to have an identified barrier to entering the labour market than men.

The things that are stopping these groups entering the labour market, and the policies that would therefore help them find work, are quite different. So perhaps the first step to tackling the ‘neet problem’ would be to ditch the term ‘neet’. Then we can have a proper discussion about the range of policies that are needed to support these very different groups.

Jonathan Clifton

How green are our parties?

The Green Party published its manifesto yesterday and is clearly taken great pains to emphasise its thinking in policy areas other than environmental issues, such as the economy, pensions, health and employment.

Nevertheless, the name ‘Green’ does tend to focus one’s attention on the environmental policies - so how do the parties compare here?

Clearly, the big issue is climate change and all set out ideas for how they would tackle this problem. The Conservatives want Britain to become the ‘world’s first low carbon economy’, while Labour seeks a ‘low carbon revolution’ and the Liberal Democrats to ‘lead the fight against climate change’. The Greens, however, suggest that ‘only the Green Party understands that this [climate change] is just one sign of the stress our economies and lifestyles put on the environment… it is a warning of the catastrophic social and environmental consequences of business as usual’.

As far as the three main parties are concerned, many of the ideas for reducing carbon emissions are very similar, although they have been given different names. The Liberal Democrats pledge a ‘ten-year programme of home insulation…paid for by the savings from lower energy bills’; the Conservatives a ‘Green Deal’, essentially a programme of home insulation paid for by the savings from lower energy bills; and Labour have an eye-catching ‘Pay As You Save’ scheme, which is … well, you can probably figure it out.

But there are some important differences, perhaps the most obvious being the parties' positions on nuclear power. Both Labour and the Conservatives are for a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. The Liberal Democrats oppose new nuclear on the basis that it is too expensive. And the Greens, unsurprisingly, resolutely oppose it both on economic and environmental grounds.

The most striking difference is really in the differing ideologies on how to achieve carbon reductions. While Labour believe active government intervention will be necessary to achieve a low-carbon transition and to generate new green jobs, the Conservatives' approach is much more laissez faire, eschewing ‘rules and regulations’ while embracing ‘incentives and market signals’. The Lib Dems have plans for tougher targets and green investment programmes and the Greens want even higher carbon targets along with direct government investment and even the re-nationalisation of gas and electricity providers.

Of course, these differences may be of little interest to an electorate focused on avoiding recession and dealing with the deficit, which suggests that the Greens’ decision not to lead on their environmental credentials but to focus on economic policies is a smart political manoeuvre.

Jenny Bird

Foreign policy: missing in action?

As observed in a recent Policy Critical post, this election campaign is giving short shrift to foreign affairs. This is understandable in the context of campaign speeches and promises, since voters want to hear most about the issues that have the greatest impact on their day-to-day lives: taxes, healthcare, education and so on.

But how the government conducts its relations with its international partners – and the trade-offs that it must make in deciding what issues to prioritise – also has profound implications for the country’s economy and national security, broadly defined, so these issues deserve to be addressed in much more detail.

It is encouraging that the manifesto statements of all three parties appear to have recognised that Britain’s place in the world has changed in recent decades. Without making too much of the argument that we are a power in decline, it is clear that we cannot afford to maintain the kind of full-spectrum combat capabilities that we enjoyed in the past. In the short term, this is because the financial crisis has limited the resources available to spend on security and defence.

More significantly, the changing nature of the security challenges we face – which include extreme weather, pandemic diseases, nuclear proliferation and transnational crime, as well as more conventional threats such as inter-state conflict and terrorism – mean that the tools and strategies we use to tackle them must also change. Greater specialisation is required, and a commitment to working in partnership with allies old and new should be seen as a strategic imperative, rather than an optional add-on to a unilateral foreign policy.

However, Labour and Conservative acceptance of this principle has not led either party to offer particularly specific suggestions for what Britain should be doing more of and what it should be doing less of. Both manifestos offer long laundry lists of desirable foreign policies – which include maintaining current spending on aid, improving conditions for the Armed Forces and delivering a sustainable peace settlement in Afghanistan – while kicking difficult questions about the cuts that must be made in order to achieve these goals to the strategic defence and security review due to be carried out in post-election period. Only the Liberal Democrats have given a firmer indication of their position on this, through their pledge to rule out the like-for-like replacement of Trident on the grounds that a price tag of £100 billion over the course of its lifetime is unaffordable.

A more realistic debate about the future contours of British foreign policy among the electorate is urgently required: it is a shame that none of the manifestos published this week have seized the opportunity to bring this about.

Alex Glennie

Repairing Broken Britain?

The ubiquitous Broken Britain theme has played strongly in this election so far and with good reason. As we know from Ipsos Mori, increasing numbers of the population think the country has become a worse place to live in. We can argue, using statistics, to the contrary, but the perception still remains.

Arguments on tackling poverty in the election so far have pitted Labour’s wealth distribution strategy against Tory plans to tackle the ‘underlying causes of crime’. Few would argue the balance between these approaches is right at present. But if David Cameron is arguing that mending Broken Britain is a serious alternative to poverty reduction measures, what does the manifesto tell us about how they will achieve this? And what might it cost?

Let’s take just one of these underlying causes of poverty – drug addiction. After over 10 years of government investment in drug treatment we have lower waiting lists and dramatically more people in treatment, but the problem has not improved.

The sharp rise in heroin and crack use over the last few decades has been contained but use of other drugs such as cocaine is increasing. Cocaine is more popular in the UK than in almost any other European country. In one area of London an astonishing two thirds of child care proceedings are now related to parental drug misuse, placing family courts and social services under huge strain.

Getting people into treatment was just the first challenge. Moving people into recovery and keeping them there should now be the primary goal. So what do the parties propose?

Labour plans to ‘switch investment towards programmes which are shown to sustain drug-free lives and reduce crime’. This cost-neutral pledge fails to acknowledge the changes needed at a local level to ensure housing is available for recovering drug users, along with more intensive treatment, peer support and access to employment.

The Liberal Democrats make pledges on respecting scientific advice and moving drug users out of prison into secure accommodation where appropriate, but similarly don’t take up the urgent challenges outlined above.

The Conservative pledge is more limited still. Drugs featured heavily in the Tories’ account of a Broken Britain – IDS’s now famous epiphany took place on an estate outside Glasgow decimated by heroin use. The manifesto pledge consists simply of adapting an existing provision – Drug Rehabilitation Orders – by linking them to abstinence-based treatment. There is no evidence that this form of treatment is any more or less effective than other forms of treatment – it depends on what is most suitable for the individual. And because it is more expensive we have to assume it will result in funding being switched from existing community programmes.

It turns out the Conservative pledge to tackle ‘underlying causes’ is, in this case at least, just a small variation on the system we already have and there is little to suggest it will have any impact on reducing poverty. In which case the Tories have a problem. With so much staked on the Broken Britain argument people will expect to see results if they win power.

Tackling poverty is not all about money, but cash helps. The Big Society idea of civic renewal could at its most ambitious help create a stronger sense of purpose which is lacking in many lives. But for those the Tories have classed as part of Broken Britain, who aren’t willing or able to engage in society, it is no substitute for providing the housing or jobs they need to get back on track.

Clare McNeil

Big questions for the Big Society

The centrepiece of the Conservative manifesto, out today, is the pledge to promote a Big Society, which the Tories counter-pose to what they characterise as Labour’s Big State. The Big Society theme serves two electoral functions: first, it contrasts the Conservative approach with what they see as Labour’s inherent statism and, second, it is intended to contrast David Cameron’s Conservatives with Mrs Thatcher’s, who famously remarked that there was ‘no such thing as society’. All of this owes much to the self-proclaimed Red Tory Philip Blond.

These zero-sum arguments about ‘society versus the state’ actually obscure more than they reveal: Labour palpably does not believe in a ‘small society’, but rather thinks that a strong civil society requires active government. David Miliband made this point in a recent lecture, arguing rightly that withdrawing the state only empowers those who already have power.

Where Labour has erred is that it relied for far too long on centralised targets and initiatives to deliver public outcomes, and gave far too little latitude to local government and local services to develop their own solutions. It is not that the state is too big – but rather that it needs be reconfigured.

Moreover, if we study the policy detail of what the Conservatives propose there is an implicit recognition that voluntary and community action often needs public stimulus. So, they propose to recruit an army of neighbourhood community organisers and want a Big Society Bank to help voluntary and community organisations take on a larger role. These initiatives are good ones – but they are also about the state doing more or working differently rather than withdrawing or cutting back.

So both parties (and the Lib Dems) favour a more active civil society – but both need to answer the following big questions:

• How can grassroots community organisations take on more responsibility without losing the informal civic ethos that is their key attraction?

• Is it really feasible that important public goods can be delivered without bureaucratic rules and processes? These rules are generally a response to things that go terribly wrong, leading to the cry ‘this must never happen again’. This is why most ‘bonfires of red tape’ tend to fail – the public demands accountability, as well as less bureaucracy.

• Does the public want to be involved in the design and delivery of public services? Even if people have the motivation, do they have the time?

• What would have to be done to funding streams and commissioning models if this agenda were to be made a reality?

• Will this all cost more in the short run and if so how do we pay for it?

I am not suggesting that these problems cannot be overcome – I believe they can and our Capable Communities project is intended to help find the answers. But this is where the debate needs to be, rather than in a phoney war about the size of the state. The real issue is how the state can be reformed to do what it is supposed to do better and support the healthy civic society we all want to see.

Rick Muir

Crime and punishment in the Labour manifesto

The Labour manifesto contains some important commitments in the area of criminal justice. Recognising that there is no more money to spend on the police, the focus is on protecting neighbourhood policing while creating new pressures for service improvement. So (as with health and education) there are to be entitlements to a basic standard of service and mechanisms of redress if those are not met.

In policing, redress is to come via Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which will have powers to intervene and replace the management team of either a police force or a Basic Command Unit if performance is poor over a prolonged period. This is to be welcomed: at the moment the Home Secretary has the power to sack a Chief Constable on grounds of poor performance, but these powers are never used. This is because ministers fear they will be accused of political interference in policing if they get too involved in firing police chiefs. This new proposal has the advantage of setting out clear criteria to assess performance, with an automatic ladder of intervention if matters do not improve.

There is now clear blue (or clear red) water between the Conservatives and Labour on policing: Labour favours takeovers by other forces or the dismissal of the management team adjudicated by the independent inspectorate, while the Conservatives favour elected police commissioners with powers to hire and fire. The reason the Conservative plan is so unpopular in the police service is because of the risk of politicising policing decisions through direct election. ippr has produced its own alternative elsewhere, involving a new role for local councils in holding the police to account.

A second interesting innovation in Labour’s criminal justice plans is in the area of punishment. Over the last decade Labour has talked a good talk on community sentencing, but community justice has remained under-funded and hence under-used by the courts as an alternative to custody. Hence there are many people in prison for relatively short periods who would be more effectively punished and rehabilitated by the use of community-based penalties. The manifesto contains welcome new pledges to strengthen forms of community payback and to ‘reduce the number of women, young and mentally ill people in prison’.

Rick Muir

Why limit top pay only in the public sector?

In an article in today's Guardian David Cameron proposes establishing a fair pay review into pay inequality in the public sector and asking it ‘to consider how to introduce a pay multiple so that no public sector worker can earn over 20 times more than the lowest paid person in their organisation’.

Putting aside the vagueness of the language – Prime Ministers have to make decisions, not pass them over to a review to consider and I’m left wondering what would happen if the review refused to contemplate the idea? – this is a proposal with some merit.

But why limit it to the public sector? David Cameron argues that a pay multiple would ‘help tackle unfair pay policies’ and ‘improve cohesion and morale’. Shouldn’t unfair pay policies be tackled in the private sector too? Wouldn’t improved cohesion and morale in the private sector help the economy recover more strongly from recession?

Whatever the result of the general election, the next government will expect senior public sector workers to behave more like their counterparts in the private sector. They will be expected to deliver the ‘efficiency savings’ that both the main parties hope will prove to be a painless way of reducing the budget deficit (they won’t, but that’s a different story). They will be charged with lifting productivity growth in the public sector into line with productivity growth in the private sector.

So why not treat senior workers in the public and private sectors the same. Forget the review. Just stop anyone in any organisation earning more than 20 times the pay of the lowest paid person in their organisation. According to David Cameron, ‘Some of our most successful private sector companies operate a pay multiple’. Let’s try it out on all of them.

Tony Dolphin

Target financial advice where it’s most urgent: the City

Yesterday the Commons public accounts committee delivered a devastating indictment of the Government’s ‘complete failure’ to tackle high levels of consumer debt. The Committee found no one holding the reigns on the Government’s money guidance service, which aims to educate people to avoid debt problems. While advice is available at crisis point in the UK (the CAB soldiers on!), there is virtually no independent financial advice.

Given the public purse is cash-strapped it makes sense to target financial education to those who need it most.

Statistics show that debt problems are most common in low income households. But dig deeper and you find few examples of risk-taking behaviour. The number one cause of over-indebtedness is not ‘bad’ behaviour but job loss. The explosion of personal debt was driven in the main by the over-mortgaged middle classes who gambled on the buy-to-let bubble.

Looking further afield it becomes clear where money mismanagement is most problematic. A friend once met a City trader at a party. Politely making conversation, he said it must be a difficult job, derivatives sound so very complicated. ‘It’s easy really’, the trader replied, ‘you don’t have to understand them to sell them.’ Feckless bankers and overpaid traders repackaged, relabelled, and sold on shed loads of debt – and the entire country now faces a decade of high unemployment and savage cuts to public services as a result.

To be really effective money guidance initiatives could target the City regulators, MPs, and the bright young things in the Treasury. It’s a shame they weren’t implemented earlier. A cross-party class to advise Ken Clarke and Gordon Brown may have covered the perils of a cavalier attitude to regulation. The late Eddie George would have benefitted from homework on the importance of capital ratios in the banking system. Surely report cards for the Woolworth’s management – who wiped out 25,000 jobs in one swoop – would have read ‘could do better’.

The City offers one clear lesson: advisers on commission tend to give bad advice. Former RBS chief Fred Goodwin and his contemporary Victor Blank at Lloyds TSB were both ‘advised’ and ‘guided’ by advisers who made vast profits on the toxic takeovers of ABN-AMRO and HBOS. Better money management won’t help ordinary households to avoid spiralling debt. Sir Fred and his pals, however, should surely be first on the list for independent money guidance.

See our blog post on basic bank accounts Read our report Strength Against Shocks

Tess Lanning

Daddy Dearest

A new poll published by Aviva this Wednesday suggests that there has been a ten-fold rise in stay-at-home dads over the past decade. With the election campaign in full swing and each party keen to win over the ‘mums net’ and ‘motorway man’ vote, all the main parties are advocating more flexible working despite the very challenging economic and jobs market. Of course there are differences in the approaches of the main parties – particularly around sharing maternity leave and who should have the right to request flexible working. But one thing that remains the same is that when politicians use ‘parents’, they are really thinking about ‘mums’.

The introduction of paid paternity leave in the UK is a fantastic achievement, but it’s only two weeks, whilst paid maternity leave is nine months. We know who policy makers think should be at home. And most ‘family friendly’ proposals still imply that whilst roles are changing men are the primary breadwinners and women the primary carers. We will only see major changes in the way jobs and home life work together when men are routinely able to, and then actually make, the same kinds of changes to their working lives as women do when they become parents. Unless men are able and prepared to step up, we will always have a gender pay gap and women will always play second fiddle in the work place.

Kate Stanley

Labour and income inequality

The gap between rich and poor in the UK has widened since 1997, according to the results of a recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It found that income inequality in 2007-08 was higher than when Labour came to power and ‘higher than in any year since at least the 1950s’.

On the face of it, this is unwelcome reading for Labour supporters. What is the point of 13 years of Labour Government if it cannot prevent widening income inequalities?

Dig deeper into the IFS’s analysis, however, and it becomes clear that the gap between rich and poor has widened despite the Government’s efforts, not because of them. In the 1980s, when government policies seemed designed to benefit the rich, income inequality increased by an enormous amount. The increase in income inequality under Labour has been far smaller because changes to the tax and benefit system since 1997 have favoured poorer households at the expense of richer ones.

But what is missing from this analysis is an understanding of the causes of the increases in inequality that have occurred before the effects of government policy are taken into account. Throughout the last three decades, it seems, underlying inequality has been increasing. In the 1980s, this was exacerbated by government policy; over the last 13 years it has been mitigated by it. But under Conservative and Labour governments alike, it has remained a powerful trend.

There are a host of explanations for this trend, including globalisation, technological change and the dominance of the financial sector in the UK economy and we need to develop a full understanding of them because – as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have demonstrated so conclusively in their book The Spirit Level – greater inequality leaves everyone worse off.

So, while it is right to challenge the main political parties during the election campaign on how their tax and benefit policies might affect income inequality, it is perhaps more important to ask them what they intend to do about the growing disparity in pre-tax incomes. If they are, to quote Lord Mandelson, ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’, they shouldn’t be.

Tony Dolphin

There are better things to tax than jobs

So the first big argument is over tax. Labour argues there will have to be a small increase in National Insurance contributions, as well as spending cuts, to help reduce the deficit. The Conservatives disagree, arguing that increasing NI contributions (which they describe as a tax on jobs) will be damaging and that they can close the deficit simply through spending cuts.

On the immediate row over National Insurance contributions, I guess Labour are right. Any incoming government will have to raise money quickly in order to get the deficit under control and it seems sensible to do this through a mixture of tax rises and spending cuts - to do it all through spending cuts alone would have a severe impact on public services and the wider economy. National Insurance also has the advantage of being a fair tax which varies according to the amount you earn. It’s not perfect - we already tax jobs quite heavily - but it’s the fairest way for a quick fix.

But while raising NI is necessary for achieving a short term goal, it falls woefully far of the bar as a long term policy on tax. Such a narrow debate misses the broader problem – that for the last few years Britain’s tax system has not raised enough to fund quality public services, that it disproportionately hits the poor, and that it lets important areas such as wealth and carbon emissions off the hook.

A more radical approach would be for politicians to try to tackle these bigger problems. It would shift away from taxing low and middle incomes (effectively a tax on people’s hard work and effort), towards taxing wealth (much of the wealth that is generated in Britain is based on little more than the luck of rising land and property prices and inheritance from family members).

In my opinion, an ambitious long-term pledge on tax might include:

1. A tax that captured a portion of rising land values and property prices
2. A 50% income tax for pay slips over £100,000 a year
3. A financial transactions tax or ‘Tobin Tax’
4. A tax that penalised carbon emissions

These would all take a while to put in place, and until that time NI will have to be raised to plug the deficit. But they are a more sustainable solution to funding the investment this country needs, and a far fairer way of doing it.

Jonathan Clifton

Extreme domestic bias?

The announcement yesterday that Gordon Brown will miss Obama’s nuclear summit is yet another indication of how domestic is trumping foreign policy in this election.

A domestic bias isn’t really surprising of course. In the scrabble for votes politicians focus – naturally – on obvious vote winners; and the electorate focus – naturally – on what happens in their own backyards.

But this concentration on the domestic feels extreme compared even to past electoral battles. Whereas in the past Iraq, the Gleneagles commitments or the need for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ figured large, in 2010 only two ‘foreign’ policy issues are attracting even a marginal degree of attention – Trident and Afghanistan. And crucially, though each encompasses a set of complex considerations, they have been reduced in electoral sloganeering to a simple domestic core, ‘can we afford it?’ (Trident), and ‘how many Brits will die?’ (Afghanistan). (Indeed, the extent to which Afghanistan is now being seen solely through the lens of soldiers’ deaths – ignoring issues of British security, Afghan security, cost, the future of international cooperation, the ‘war on drugs’ and numerous other issues – has become so extreme that even the Army is complaining).

There are two worrying aspects to this trend. First, it seems likely that we are focusing so much on the domestic because things here in the UK seem so bad. When the economy has looked rosy, when we have felt confident about our place in the world – indeed, at times of ‘Cool Britainnia’ – it has been easy to consider events beyond our borders. But when things look rough, when we have to cut a deficit, find jobs for our young people and try to find a way to make our banks work for us, there is a tendency to hunker down. In other words, this isn’t just an electoral trend. Dealing with the deficit and reorganising our economy is a major task which seems likely to preoccupy the next government, whoever is in power.

Even if we have our fingers in our ears, the tree falling in Afghanistan, or the US, or Europe, or China, still makes a sound. In fact, as ippr’s National Security Commission made clear it’s a sound we can less and less afford to ignore. President Obama is calling a summit to try to limit the growing spread of nuclear weapons – a terrifying prospect for the UK. Why do we not see it as a priority? And this is just one of many challenges (including climate change, poverty, terrorism and banking regulation) in our interdependent world that require us all to act together. Let’s start by listening.

Laura Chappell

Don't meddle with the BBC!

Once again MPs are united against the BBC. A cross-party committee of MPs has demanded the BBC be accountable to Parliament. Surely public eyebrows will rise in unison at MPs criticising 'spending public money without fully analysing costs and benefits'. But behind the pot-kettle-black, do they have a point?

The BBC has undeniably made a few foolhardy decisions of late. In trying to maintain public interest the corporation has felt pressured to bid for popular names (infamously Jonathan Ross). But there have also been some fantastic decisions. The corporation persevered with their decision to base BBC Scotland in Glasgow despite severe recruitment difficulties early on. They have invested heavily in new talent, there as elsewhere (the majority of people that work in UK private media were trained at the BBC), and in the process fulfilled their mandate of being a truly UK-wide broadcaster.

The BBC is not beyond criticism, and it is right to question excessive spending, especially on pay at the top. But we are in murky water when MPs start demanding that the BBC is accountable to them, and must justify every pound spent, every decision made. The BBC plays a vital role democratic politics (a point we have made here before), and must maintain independence from Parliament.

So is there a way to balance accountability with independence? There is. And – who knew?! – it already exists. Every 10 years the Charter review scrutinises the BBC’s role, activities and budget. When next up for review – in 2016 – this process should be rigorous and ensure value for money from the Beeb. But once the financial settlement is complete, like it or not, the BBC must be left to do its job. That is what independence means.

If criticisms that the BBC has too many, overpaid managers ring true, it may well be that the unrelenting attacks are a driving force. Organisations that lack the freedom to take risks and make mistakes see middle management multiply in a bid to disperse accountability for ill-fated decisions. Meddling MPs may well end up with a cowed corporation of risk-averse managers, with fewer funds to support the talent and creativity it thrives on. That, surely, would be a waste of tax-payers money.

Tess Lanning and Laura Chappell

Immigration in the Election 3: Labour

Gordon Brown's speech on immigration last week was a call for mainstream political unity on an issue which can too often turn nasty (particularly in election years), a defence of the policy framework put in place by Labour, and a strong critique of the Conservative commitment to cap immigration.

Labour are working hard to position themselves as tough on immigration, in the face of a public and media debate that has often portrayed them as a ‘soft touch’. In fact, Labour have a good story to tell on immigration policy to those who are concerned about control.

No system is perfect, least of all in immigration, but the Points-Based System is a pretty effective way of deciding which migrants should be able to come to the UK to work, based on the needs of the economy; the Government have more-or-less got on top of the asylum issue; and the new UK Border Agency is presiding over an immigration system that is more functional and controlled than it has been for many years. Even the decision to open up the UK’s labour market to workers from the new EU countries, which led to a massive and largely unpredicted flow of migrants from eastern Europe (and considerable political backlash), has had few negative impacts and many positive ones.

Labour’s failings on immigration have been of politics, not of policy, in recent years. It’s worth noting three main political problems:

• Labour ministers have been reluctant to talk openly about the very real challenges and opportunities presented by immigration, which has added to a sense that the issue is somehow ‘off limits’ and ceded the space to those who hold extreme views. So, it is welcome that Gordon Brown is tackling the issue head on in this election campaign.
• Labour have allowed the political debate on this issue to become highly polarised, because they have not been able to develop a balanced and moderate narrative that occupies the middle ground and can convince the majority of voters. So, it was good to see Gordon Brown emphasising the (considerable) degree of policy consensus on the issue which now exists.
• Labour have too often tried to solve a political problem with a slew of policy announcements and changes. All too often, this only reinforces the perception that the immigration system is broken. So, although Gordon Brown was right to defend the policy framework that Labour have put in place, he may have made his political message less effective by also using his speech to announce or re-announce a range of relatively minor tweaks to the system.

Sarah Mulley

Settle down

Anyone watching Newsnight this Wednesday would be forgiven for thinking that the entire debate about immigration comes down to numbers. Whatever people’s concerns about migration – be it the impact on the economy, public services or community cohesion – the answer from politicians is always the same: adjust the number of immigrants coming to the UK. Schools can’t cope with all the Polish kids? Stop letting so many Poles in. Pakistani immigrants aren’t integrating? Let fewer in to the country. The economy needs more skilled workers? Adjust the points system to let them in.

There is a danger with this approach that it assumes the only thing immigration policy can do is alter the number of migrants entering the country. But a lot happens once a migrant has crossed the border, too. Greater state support for settlement can improve integration and help tackle many of the problems people are concerned about. Schools can’t cope with all the Polish kids? Provide the schools with teaching assistants to help them cope. Pakistani immigrants aren’t integrating? Fund and support outreach workers to help them learn English and establish roots in the community.

I’m slightly bemused that while politicians are keen to point to Canada’s immigration system as a model way to control the number of immigrants arriving, they neglect to mention the fact that Canada also invests a great deal in supporting immigrants to settle in, and that their government endorses an official model of multiculturalism. Dedicated translation services, English language tuition, education programmes, information diffusion, citizenship instruction, employment programmes and social welfare policies are all part of the tool kit used. The evidence is that if you invest early in helping migrants to settle in to their new country, then you stave off many of the problems and tensions faced further down the line. It might just be more important to solving these problems than limiting the numbers you let cross the border in the first place.

Jonathan Clifton

From Copenhagen to UK marginals

The Prime Minister is the co-chair of a new UN high-level advisory group on climate change finance. To mark the first meeting of the group (known inelegantly by climate wonks as the HLAG) Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, launched a new UK government International Climate Change Action Plan on Wednesday morning.

The HLAG is quite a big deal in the international climate change world, but more domestic concerns probably lie behind Ed Miliband’s Action Plan launch. Polling data comprehensively shows that climate change and environment are not decisive electoral issues. However, recent work by ippr – as yet unpublished – shows that an important minority (17 per cent) of floating voters in marginal constituencies list climate among their top three issues.

Our data suggests these voters are young, liberally inclined and important in the battle for the centre ground of UK politics. So while climate change may not matter electorally at the national level, constituency by constituency it may and Ed Miliband’s launch suggests that Labour is reading the runes on this (it’s important to emphasise that we have presented our poll findings to Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems).

The plan itself is somewhat short on substance, but the nature of the launch and its audience points to a wooing of groups to which the environmentally-inclined floating voters may belong. Sharing Miliband’s platform was President Jagdeo of Guyana – also an HLAG member – who heaped praise on the UK PM and DECC Secretary for their leadership prior to last year’s big climate summit in Copenhagen.

The audience was made up of green and development groups and others that have campaigns on climate change, such as the Women’s Institute. The question of whether Gordon Brown will continue as co-chair of the HLAG should Labour not be returned to government on May 6 is moot; he’s there in an official capacity and so his fate in this case would be in the hands of the new UK government. ippr’s polling data suggests that Ed Miliband’s green and development group-wooing strategy may increase his leader’s chances.

Andrew Pendleton